Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A group of climate researchers have made the shocking discovery, that telling people everyone is going to die from the apocalyptic effects of manmade climate change, and that the only hope is for them personally to join a local group of activists who hope to influence the direction of the Washington juggernaut, makes normal people feel depressed and unmotivated.
According to the Huffington Post;
Why Climate Change Rhetoric Simultaneously Succeeds and Fails
Despite mounting evidence about the threats posed by climate change, most Americans do not consider it to be a very important problem facing the country, nor are they engaged in large-scale advocacy efforts to address it.
What might be done? An increasingly common argument, backed both by intuition and social science research, is that rhetoric should highlight how climate change will personally affect Americans’ lives. Among the most common “personal relevance” frames are those that focus on how it might impact personal health or make it more difficult for people to obtain the food that they need.
It turns out that these personal relevance messages have the opposite effect from what we might expect: Although they do increase people’s concern about climate change, they actually reduce their willingness to advocate on the issue.
Framing climate change in terms of its effect on either personal health or food security reminds people that very important personal goals (staying healthy and eating well) will be difficult to achieve. It puts them in a bad mood, and when people are in a bad mood they are less willing to engage in collective advocacy efforts.
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-seth-levine/why-climate-change-rhetor_b_8913694.html
A senior political campaign manager once explained the rules of negative campaigning to me. You don’t distribute negative leaflets to your supporters, you distribute negative leaflets in areas which vote for the opposition, to make them feel disengaged with the political process, and stop them from wanting to vote. The fact hardcore greens seem to have trouble grasping this obvious principle, of how normal people’s minds work, makes me really wonder what is happening inside their heads.
I think their infowar problems run a lot deeper than just negative campaigning.
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/how-to-run-a-really-bad-infowar-campaign/
Pointman
Good read Pointman – makes you wonder why they aren’t losing faster.
Why aren’t they losing faster? A great question.
Here is a possible answer: Al Gore and friends developed all of this green investing, then went to each of many pieces of government and many governments with a get-in-on-the-ground-floor argument – they said to many countries “Hey, you can invest your govt employee pensions in green investments now, and as you make national policy to buy the green technologies, and as other nations sign on, and also invest their pension funds in these green investments as well as buy the technology, you will have a solid, steady return – plus act now and get in on the ground floor before everyone else signs on.”
So, most of the planet’s nations have both signed on, and have invested their public-bureaucrat pensions in green funds. And, at the same time, have committed public dollars to green energy efforts.
Right about now, as costs are reaped, equipment is requiring replacement, and the energy is not materializing, various countries are going to give up on this green juggernaut.
Pensions will hurt.
Pointman,
Good thinking there, it seems to me. There is an aspect that I feel bears some consideration, having to do with what can be summed up as overconfidence. It’s as though the “ringleaders” did not consider they were doing anything all that difficult . . as though this was not their first rodeo, so to speak.
One thing I notice around here, is the hesitance on the part of many “climate skeptics” to accept that they may have already been bamboozled by a similar PR campaigns (infowar as you put it). And I think I am occasionally seeing agent provocateurs trying to stir up division here, by leaning heavily on previous successes in the “settled science” department.
Particularly along the lines of; “What the hell are you smart science kids thinking? You’ve got stupid Religious people in your ranks! . . They don’t consider Evolution a scientific fact, like you smart science boys and girls do, and you’re not vigorously casting them out.”
This ain’t the Siants giant’s first rodeo, me thinks, and I suspect they thought they could count on more “pull” from the desire to please the teacher, so to speak, from whom the good science boys and girls had received many pats on the head already, for accepting that some ideas can become facts in science, by “consensus” among the specialists.
Excellent read, Pointman. I read it before and it was good to read again. Thanks for the link.
Excellent. I didn’t remember seeing that. Saved in my Climate folder.
Malthusian hypocrisy does peak my blood pressure from time to time, but mostly increase my lifespan. This doesn’t mean anything a lot, because in accordance with Comrade Court’s green lexicon Flat Earth Denialists aren’t classifiable as normal people.
One can gauge the effectiveness of your sales pitch by watching the arm and hand movements of the mark. Arms crossed in front of their chest, mind closed to what you are saying. Hands folded in their lap, closed mind but being polite about it. Arm extended with middle finger raised, you have touched a nerve.
The truth.
It is good the climate change folks are getting into what works or not but a good place to start would be the truth. After that people are capable of making up their own minds and the greens should not worry about that if they have been truthful.
It seems to me the greens are more about manipulation to achieve their goals than being upfront and honest.
Olen,
And the sun rises in the east; bears actually DO sh*t in the woods; and water actually does flow downhill. 🙂
@ur momisugly Phil, 10.22 am, ‘And the sun rises in the east”
tell that to somebody that lives above the polar circle. And the bear that shat on my front lawn. ( the water thing? You are probably right although he Dutch have been opposing that idea for a few centuries!)
Ah but how many forrests that have bears have rabbits too?
But it is no longer clear that the Pope is Catholic…
What research will tax dollars fund next?
I’m betting that some day researchers will find out that hitting your thumb with a hammer hurts.
I am never quite sure how seriously to take “The Journal of Mundane Behavior” http://mundanebehavior.org/
I certainly have no idea how much of that is taxpayer funded.
More huffings of HuffPo
It is well named 🙂
“Despite mounting evidence about the threats posed by climate change, most Americans do not consider it to be a very important problem”
These presumably curious authors aren’t interested in learning how many Americans simply call BS on the so called mounting evidence. Evidence which is obviously no more than an endless stream of hypothetical attributions of everything imaginable.
The stream is steaming with rancid conjecture and Americans are supposed to be getting worried.
So this psychoanalyzing is needed to explain why it ain’t working so well.
The left always does this. On every issue. They invent afflictions for those who reject their superior positions.
More telling is the positive messages from the doomsday camp. When they find a shred of evidence to support their claims, they can scarcely conceal their glee. It takes a truly twisted soul to be happy they found evidence the world is going to end.
Yes, I’ve noticed that as well although from the opposite direction. It seems that when any evidence is presented that something is not as bad as first thought, it is quickly dismissed, torn apart, ignored, laughed at or called “anti-science”. Like good news is not allowed.
Actually, getting back the topic at hand, it seems those conclusions might just apply to those who are trying find such conclusions. The rest of us just face palm.
So true.
A quick scan of the articles and associated comments in The Guardian, for example, confirms your point. They absolutely wallow in a self righteous belief that the actions of mankind are sending us all to hell in a handcart. They are never happier than when a member of the Priesthood like Nuccetilli writes an article interpreting the Scriptures of climate science, confirming that hell and damnation Is looming.
This is by far the most disturbing aspect of all of this for me. Sometimes I wonder if some people like it because if everything is hopeless they dont in fact have to do anything themselves. They can just chalk it up as “humanity sucks”. Which might explain why so few people Ive known who think our actions are killing the earth itself dont do anything beyond token gestures in their own lives. If I thought my actions were threatening the future of lifes ability to persist I would change my ways. In fact the environmental issues I do see validity to have shaped my lifestyle. when I point this last part out to believers I get stuff about how hard it is, and such then get ignored as I tell them real changes they could make. It is bizarre to watch.
I love it when shrinks become climate experts.
I love it when climate experts shrink.
Like George Costanza’s “frightened turtle”, you’d think they’d embrace warming…
Let’s see, people are hammered with data suggesting that we are too fat, the government forces us to put 40% of the corn crop into biofuels and the environmentalists want us to believe we are going to starve to death from climate change. And they wonder why no one takes them seriously?
The “data” suggesting we are all too fat was also cooked. When you change the goalposts for what’s considered “normal,” especially based on an “averaging” formula (BMI) invented by an astronomer in 1830 (nothing whatever to do with health), yeah, you can in one night move 40% of the population into the “overweight” category and declare them “diseased.” Follow the MONEY!
Motivational psychologists who work in advertising have know for years that scare stories don’t sell products. The insurance industry learned that lesson many years ago. Look at the GEICO ads today.
That’s it! What they need is a new icon – call it a “Climo”. It would be cute, green (of course), walk and talk like a human, maybe with a scottish brogue – saying things like, “we can do this, if we all pull together”, and he could pick up some trash and put it in the recycling bin and drive off into the sunset in his electric
tincancar. It would be awesome. No idea yet what the “Climo” would look like. Maybe a polarbearpenguinekittenpuppy.[Maybe a sleekfuzzyfurryfeatherypuffy polarbearpenguinekittenpuppy. With big eyes. .mod]
ManBearPig!!
I still remember the worst ad EVER–for some insurance company back in the 60’s. Views of a derelict Victorian graveyard in a dark rain, with church bells dolorously accompanying the narrator’s litany of death by disease. Used to just about give me nightmares as a little kid!
Intellectual cap and trade, and a trait of this current administration is diversion. A literal shell-game with no shells except the nuts, who hide in them.
The truth is scarier than the rhetoric and diametrically opposed to the narrative. The next inevitable ice age will precipitate a catastrophe beyond comprehension and no amount of CO2, or any other GHG for that matter, will stop it from occurring.
You mean I’ll have to play polo in Wellington instead of Greenwich? 😉
And we will be able to ski on top of the km’s of ice and snow burying much of the US and Europe.
If your kids go to public schools and they seem depressed, it might be the result of the non-stop liberal brain washing they receive.
Public education is child abuse.
Get your kids to safety.
Another thought. When they give personal examples, these examples become much easier to comprehend and evaluate. With the claim that polar bears will starve, it’s distant and you can separate your personal knowledge. The claim that 1C of warming will cause you to not be able to feed your children, your alarm bells start going off as it’s an innately ludicrous claim.
Similarly, the “New York will feel like Atlanta” evaluation was an own-goal. Despite using exaggerated and unlikely warming to base the study on, there is still the issue: People live in Atlanta. People live in Cuba. Without air conditioning. It makes the effects easier to grok and much less frightening
Most people just aren’t this stupid. While you might be able to believe (unless you read) that 1C of warming could cause a family in sub-Saharan Africa to “not be able to feed their children,” the idea that would happen in advantaged countries just doesn’t pass the logic test. And frankly, most of the “market” for CAGW agitprop (dot-org. donors, Prius buyers) is a long way on the hierarchy of needs from worries about their next meal. It’s not passing the ignorance test.
Now try connecting the dots. The senior political ops specialists have turned off the scare tactics after Paris. And they can just as easily turn the heat up after the elections and throw in a claim of mandate too.
The problem is that the activists can not promise a better world, they can only say it will not change if we take their bitter medicine.
The sceptical side has more or less the same problem except that you don’t need to take any bitter medicine.
Peoble know that the world in 100 years is very different anyway, so a little GW looks not scaring relative to the changes during a year. I am much more scared of the climate politics than the climate itself.
Environmental Catastrafarians…Erich Erlichs all.
The activists get indoctrinated at their places of ‘learning’ and then flap around like thousands of chicken little’s drunk on the kool-aid. If only they could be taught critical thinking and how to spot an agenda.
Instead of trying to get people to feel good about what they are doing by feeling bad about what they are they are doing, they should switch their message to “Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die!”?
Their audience might start to do something then. 😎
with suggestions floating around that the next IPCC report should focus on the social sciences, Sierra Club finding this research “priceless” is a bit of a concern!
Oct 2015: Daily Nexus: Neil Yanga: Adam Seth Levine Hosts Seminar Discussing Presentation of Climate Change
Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University Adam Seth Levine hosted a seminar titled “Citizen Engagement (and Disengagement) in Response to Climate Change” to discuss the communication of climate change at Bren Hall Thursday afternoon…
Levine’s research is based on an experiment in which he gave sheets presenting the issue of climate change to different subject groups with varying degrees of urgency and observed which participants chose to sign a petition in support of political action on climate change. He found those who received more personalized, urgent information were less likely to want to engage in a solution…
Sierra Club member Robert Bernstein said Levine’s research is “priceless.”
“Somebody has actually done evidential research on what it is that motivates people to do environmental action,” Bernstein said.
2 pages: Dec 2015: HomelandSecurityNewswire: Andrew J.Hoffman: Social sciences are best hope for ending debates over climate change
(This essay was adapted from Andrew J. Hoffman’s recently released book, How Culture Shapes the Climate Change Debate. Andrew J. Hoffman is Holcim (US) Professor of Sustainable Enterprise, Education Director at the Graham Sustainability Institute, University of Michigan.)
To move forward, we have to disengage from fixed battle on one scientific front and seek approaches that engage people who are undecided about climate change on multiple social and cultural fronts. Only by broadening the scope of the debate to include this social and cultural complexity can we ever hope to achieve broad-scale social and political consensus. More scientific data can only take us so far; engaging the inherently human aspects of this debate will take us the rest of the way…
In the words of Tony Leiserowitz from Yale University, “the proper model for thinking about the climate debate is not a boxing match, but a jury trial. We can never convince the die-hard skeptics, just like a prosecutor will never convince the defense lawyer, and doesn’t try. Rather, we should focus on convincing the silent jury of the mass public.”
Two tactics are necessary for reaching the undecided middle…
http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20151201-social-sciences-are-best-hope-for-ending-debates-over-climate-change
April 2015: Nature: David Victor: Climate change: Embed the social sciences in climate policy
David G. Victor calls for the IPCC process to be extended to include insights into controversial social and behavioural issues
Building the social sciences into the IPCC and the climate-change debate more generally is feasible over the next assessment cycle, which starts in October and runs to 2022, with efforts on the following three fronts…ETC
http://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-embed-the-social-sciences-in-climate-policy-1.17206
[Ah. So the “social sciences” found out that they too can “win fiends and influence people” AND get more government money from the so-far-unobtainable “hard science” money coming into the climate change climate wars! .mod]
“Social science” applied to help the individual? OK. To a point.
“Social science” applied to control the masses? Not so OK. That’s the point.
(Besides, it’s nothing new. It just now has a name.)
It’s very telling that they feel the need to align themselves with the social sciences, and pathetic that they believe it will help their Cause. They cling desperately and foolishly to the idea that somehow, after all these years, they are going to get the message just right so that the people who are, I suppose “confused” will finally “understand”. The heavens will open up, trumpets will sound, and Green angels will sing.
They are delusional.
‘Win FIENDS’? HAHAHA. Yes, we need more devils as buddies.
Q: Why are friends like pirates?
A: Because you can’t have them without the arrrrr.
I’ll get my coat.
Bruce Cobb
But, why do your friends like pirates?
Because without the argggh, they’d be fiends.
Leftists are sand in the Vaseline of Democracy.
Oh! Ewwwwwww! That’s just wrong jorge! lol
“Vaseline” is a petroleum product so …. I guess … we’re back to … um … Leftist are part of “Big Oil”?
“Mounting evidence about the threats posed by climate change…” Should be “mounting counter-evidence.”
Climate Alarmism has fully degenerated into non-stop Bulverism. As C.S. Lewis described it:
Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is “wishful thinking.” You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant – but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.
In other words, you must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method [Note: This essay was written in 1941.] is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he came to be so silly. In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it “Bulverism.” Some day I am going the write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father – who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than the third – “Oh, you say that because you are a man.” “At that moment,” E. Bulver assures us, “there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume your opponent is wrong, and then explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall.” That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.
…and we’re current running a sale on $50 million ad campaigns for the election.